27/03/2026
It was just a friend
Someone said that recently about a woman I was sitting with, a woman grieving the loss of her best friend of over 50 years. A friendship that held the shape of her life.
Just a friend.
I've been sitting with that ever since because I know that feeling. Not the loss of a person, but the loss of something that held a piece of who I was.
Nearly five years ago I sold my wellness sanctuary. A few years after that, it closed.
I built that place from nothing. It was my dream made real. A space where people could feel genuinely restored. I poured everything into it. My vision, my energy, my heart. I watched a community grow inside those walls. I watched my team flourish. I watched people leave lighter than they arrived.
And then it was gone.
You would think after all this time, I would be over it.
I'm not.
I see it every day, right outside my window. There's no out of sight, out of mind. I wake up to it. The building that held my dream, standing empty, just metres from where I live. And there's this quiet ache that doesn't seem to have an expiry date.
I've sat with enough grief in my life to know that some of it transforms you. I lost Braith at 7 1/2 months old. That grief became something sacred over time. He is still with me, shaping me, guiding me to be more than I would have without him. The loss alchemised into something I can hold with love. It is precious.
The sanctuary hasn't done that yet. It's still just loss. Just heartache. There's a small empty spot where it used to live inside me, a piece of my heart I am yet to reclaim.
Maybe I'm still waiting. Maybe some grief just takes longer to show you what it's for.
Or maybe it's okay that some losses are just losses. Just proof of how much you loved that thing or person. How precious it was to have it for the time you did. No silver lining. No life lesson.
I don't know yet. I'm still in it.
And if you're still in something too, something that doesn't make sense to anyone else... I want you to know that no one knows how much of you was in that precious gift, no one but you.
That's not nothing. That's everything š
